The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] (7 page)

BOOK: The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins]
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Stan
turned to start forward again. By this time Rosie was really scared. She called
out to him from the rear of the group. “Stan, wait… I want to walk next to you.
I’m scared. Okay, baby?”

“Sure,
Rosie, I’ll wait. Come on up here with me.”

As
Stan waited for Rosie, the sounds got a little louder. Rosie was practically
babbling with fright. “Stan, this is the darkest part of this damn tunnel.
There are more lights broken than there are working, and my flashlight app
doesn’t work worth a damn. Wait for me, please.”

Stan
stood waiting for Rosie to catch up with him. Rosie was only a few steps away
when she saw something reaching out of the shadows toward Stan. She stopped,
frozen in place, and screamed.

“Stan,
look out! Something’s behind you. It’s gonna grab you! Move!”

But it
was too late for Stan. The thing was a creature like none of them had ever seen
before. It grabbed Stan around his neck with the claw at the end of its mutated
arm. The creature’s other arm was missing the skin and flesh from the elbow
down to the clawed hand, which was wrapped around Stan’s waist, pulling him
back into the shadows, to its chest. With a quick, single movement, it pulled
both of its arms across Stan’s neck and belly, gutting him like a toddler might
pop a balloon. The creature let Stan fall to the floor, kneeling next to him to
rip into him one more time.

Rosie,
screamed as she ran to Stan’s lifeless body, her hands balled into fists. She
fell to her knees next to the creature, beating on it with her fists. Her long
black hair was falling across her face. As the creature was ripping into Stan’s
body, it was flinging great gouts of his blood everywhere, including on Rosie.
She was being drenched from head to toe with Stan’s blood. Her screams echoed through
the tunnel.

“Damn
you! You can’t have my boyfriend! You can’t have him, damn it! You can’t
have
him!”

Beating
on the creature with her fists to save Stan — pointless, as Stan was already
dead — the shadowy creature knocked Rosie onto her back with a single swing of
its arm. Once on her back with one quick swing of its claws, it tore her open
from chest to belly. Rosie took her last breath sprawled on her back between
the subway rails.

Stan’s
lifeless body lay on the ground, his intestines pouring out around him. One
lung had been exposed when his ribs were ripped away. Rosie lay dead next to
him, torn to shreds by the creature’s claws. Her belly and chest gaped open.
The contents of her savaged body spilled onto the ground and mixed with Stan’s.
Blood was everywhere.

The
other four friends stood, staring through unblinking eyes their mouths hanging
open, unable to speak a single word. This was supposed to be an end-of-summer
fling. Now they had just watched their friends die right in front of them. This
wasn’t supposed to happen to teenagers on vacation. Not in Manhattan. Not
anywhere.

Mary’s
body was locked in fear. Her feet felt like they were encased in lead. Her
brown eyes were wide open, staring at the bodies of their two friends. Her
fingers were twisted into her auburn hair. Her mouth was hanging open, but no
words came out. She tried to speak or shout or scream, but she could not. She
stood like that for what seemed like minutes. But it was only seconds; five?
Ten? Twenty?

As
Mary finally caught her breath, she realized she was shouting at Jerry.

“Jerry,
what is this? They can’t be dead! This isn’t supposed to happen to us — we’re
here to have
fun!
They can’t die. Not them, not anyone of us should
die.”

Jerry
pulled Mary close to him. With his arms wrapped around her, he held her close,
trying to comfort her. He held her tightly so she wouldn’t fall to the ground.

“It’s all
right, Mary. I’m here. I’ve got you. Oh, my god, that thing
shredded
them. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen anything like it,
ever
.
We need to get back to the platform,
now!”

Mike
had fallen to his knees, his mouth hanging open. His eyes staring forward, unblinking.
Jennifer was stiff, frozen by what she had just witnessed behind Mike. Her blue
eyes were sharply focused on her dead friends. Her hands were resting on Mike’s
shoulders. She was trembling, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

Finally,
Mike broke out of the fear that gripped him. Mike grabbed Jen’s hands. She
looked at him with her eyes were full of tears. Her long, blonde hair spilled
over both of their faces. With Mike looking at her, all of her feelings rose up
inside of her. She screamed at Mike, “Oh my God! Look at them! Their insides are
pouring out. It’s just mixing together on the ground. We have to help them. We
can’t leave them like this. They need our help.”

Mike
took a deep breath. With tears in his eyes, he spoke to her. “Look at them,
Jennifer. They’re all ripped open. They’re dead. There’s nothing that we can do
to help them. We need to get the hell out of this damn tunnel. I don’t know
what those things are, but they just killed our friends, and if we stay here,
they will kill us. This shit is fucking
crazy!
We need to get out of
this damn tunnel. Grab Mary and Jerry. We need to run as fast as we can back to
the platform. Now.”

Mike
grabbed Jennifer by the arm and started to run back towards the platform that
they had come from. Mike looked at Jerry and saw that he was doing the same for
Mary. Jerry shouted, “Run! Run
now!
Come on, everyone, run! Those goddamn
creatures are starting to follow us! If we don’t get the hell out of this
tunnel, we’ll be the next to die!”

As
they ran, the thoughts and images of the horrible, savage death of their
friends cascaded through their minds. Why didn’t they take a cab? Why did they
have to take this shortcut? They couldn’t shake the thought that
teenagers
are not supposed to die.
Not like this.

The
four of them that were left desperately wanted this nightmare to end. They
wanted to go back to before their friends were killed. They literally ran for
their lives.

As Mike
was running, pulling Jennifer along with him, the lower platform was coming
into view. He shouted, “There’s the platform! Come on! Don’t stop! Run! They’re
behind us!”

Mike
was the first one up the steps to the platform. He pulled Jen up the narrow
stairs and pointed to a section of the wall that had a working light. He pushed
Jennifer in that direction. Mike waited for Jerry and helped him and Mary up
the steps. After they were all on the platform, they huddled under the one
working light, catching their breath. The girls were doing much better. The run
helped shake the numbing fear out of their minds. After a few minutes, Mike
could see the first creatures stumbling down the tunnel towards them. He
shouted, “They’re coming! We need to move… Go up the stairs to the ticket
platform, and from there we can get to the street. It’ll be safe there!”

They
ran up the dozen steps to the ticket platform and stopped again to look around.
Jen slumped against the back wall, crying uncontrollably. Mary knelt next to
her with tears in her eyes. She looked up at Jerry.

“Jerry?”
said Mary. “Why did they have to die? They weren’t hurting anyone. Why, Jerry?
Why did they have to die?”

Jerry
was kneeling next to Mary, holding her close to him, while still keeping an eye
out down the stairs. He knew the creatures would still be after them; he just
didn’t know how far away they were or how far into the light they would dare to
come.

“Come
on girls,” Jerry said. “You need to get it together. There’ll be time to cry
later. We need to get out of this station right now. Mike, are you all right?
Is everything good with you? We need to get up to the street as soon as we can.
It’ll be safer up there. Come on, let’s get moving.”

Mike
was helping Jennifer to her feet. He looked around for the creatures that had
killed their friends. He looked up the stairs to see if it was clear that way
as well. He said to Jerry, “I’m good, and Jen’s ready to go. Come on, let’s get
out of this hellhole.”

Like
Mike, Jerry was looking around, checking the tunnel in both directions. He knew
that the creatures must be close behind them. Neither of the boys knew if there
were other creatures down here with them, elsewhere in the tunnel. They looked
like their heads were on swivels, their eyes looking for danger everywhere; the
stairs up to the street, however, looked safe, as far as they could see.

“Okay,
I know this is probably not the best time to bring this up,” Mike said, “but we
have to talk about this sometime, and now is as good as ever. We just watched two
of our friends brutally slaughtered back there. There’s no guarantee that this
is a one-time event, or even that it was a random act of violence. We found the
creatures down here, or better put,
they
found
us.
The chance
that there are more of them is very good. I hope I’m wrong, but right now we
can’t take a chance that there aren’t more of those things around. We’ve already
seen three or four. There might be a whole swarm of them down here with us. We
all need to keep in mind that there might be many, many more.”

“I’m
scared!” said Jennifer.

“Come
on,” Mike continued. “Let’s get out of this place. We need to be up on the
street, where it should be safer. It’s more likely we could find help up there.”

Jerry
and Mary, walking hand in hand, started up the last set of stairs to the
street. Jennifer followed, with Mike bringing up the rear.

They
talked as they were climbing the last set of stairs. Mike asked, “Does anyone
have any idea what the hell those things were?”

“I’ve
never seen anything like them before,” said Jerry. “In all of my ROTC training,
I was never told about anything like them, ever. In all the books that I have
read or TV shows I’ve watched, there’s never been anything like what we just
saw. They stand upright like a human, but humans don’t have claws for fingers
or fangs for teeth. Your guess is as good as mine right now. All I know for
sure is they are vicious and very effective killers, but they don’t move as
fast as a human does. Rather than walk, they shuffle or lurch as they move.
They seem to have some kind of spasms running through their bodies.”

“Did
you see how fast they killed Stan and Rosie?” asked Mike. I don’t ever want to run
into those things again.”

“I know,”
said Jerry.

Mary said,
“Did you notice they had tattered clothes on? All torn up, and just hanging on
them. Animals don’t wear clothes. What the hell
are
they?”

“I know,”
said Jerry, “But their clothes were torn to hell. But yeah, they had clothes
on.”

“Jerry,
what’s going on?” said Jennifer. “This can’t be real, can it?”

“Jen,
I can’t tell you what they are or where they came from, or if there are any
more of them. Right now all I want to do is get back to our room where we can
rest. From there we can figure out what we should do. All I know right now is I
want to get out of this city.”

They were
just two or three steps from street level; nearly there. They felt like they
would be safe soon, and this whole ordeal would be over. From the street, they
would go to their rooms, get their bags and go home. Everything would be better
once they got home. They knew it would.

Little
did they know was that the street was not going to be safe for them. They would
not be able to get home. Not now. Maybe not ever. Their nightmare had just
begun. The deaths of their friends marked the start of their troubles. Before
this would be over, they would see many more people die. It could be months, if
not years, perhaps even decades before this would end — if it would end at all.

Tomorrow
they would start back home.

Tomorrow
they would be running.

Every
tomorrow for the rest of their lives they would be running.

Today
they did not know how bad it was going to get.

With
any luck, they might stay alive to witness the world die.


 

Chapter
2

Mazatlan, Mexico

 

It was
early on Friday morning, August 15, 2036, while it was still dark, that he first
heard the screams. No one in their home who heard it knew what was happening
outside. Those who were awakened by the screams lay in their beds, hoping it
was only a bad dream.

When
they heard the first screams, they looked at their bedside clocks and realized
that it was still two hours until the time they would normally get up to start
their work day.

The
family owned a tourist booth on a nearby dock right where the cruise ships
docked. Cruise ships came to Mazatlan three days a week during the summer
cruise season. This provided the main source of income for most of the families
which operated booths on the pier.

They had
three hours to get ready before today’s cruise ship would dock. Their goal was
to be set up and ready to hawk their souvenirs to the tourists disembarking
from the ship. They didn’t want to miss a single opportunity while the pier was
full of tourists with their fists full of money to spend. They had never missed
meeting a ship.

It was
about 2:30 AM when 39-year old Gumercindo Ortega was awakened by the screams.
He lay on his bed listening, wondering what was happening. He didn’t move. He
lay staring at the ceiling so he would not wake his wife, Esperana, a year
younger than he.

Lying
there, he had a sinking feeling about the day’s prospects. After some time,
just before it was time for their alarm clock to go off, he reached over to his
wife, gently shaking her in order to wake her.

Esperana
opened her eyes and looked at her husband, smiling. Gumercindo wished that he
was as sound a sleeper as she was. Once he got to sleep, it didn’t take much to
wake him.

He
smiled back at his wife, telling her good morning. He got up, used the bathroom
and got dressed quickly. He went to their son’s bedroom. Maurico was 20 years
old. Gumercindo lightly knocked on his door. Maurico called to him: “Good
morning, Father. I’m awake. I’ll be ready for breakfast soon.”

Gumercindo
continued down the short hallway. Their middle child, Lucinda, was eleven.
After knocking, he called through the door, “Lucinda, it’s time to get up.
Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes.”

“I am
awake, Father,” she answered him. “I have been since the screams started last
night. Is everything all right? I was scared!”

“I don’t
know. All I heard was the screams. No gunshots, nothing. If we keep to
ourselves, we should be fine.”

The
last bedroom door belonged to the family’s oldest daughter, Annalicia, age 14.
Gumercindo knocked on her door, telling her it was time to get up. She
answered, “Father, I’m awake. The people screaming outside have kept me awake. I
will be down for breakfast soon. Thank you, Father.”

Gumercindo
turned and went downstairs to the kitchen. Esperana was there already, making
breakfast for all of them.

Gumercindo
was the oldest of nine children: six boys and three girls. They lived on a
small plot of land, growing vegetables. They sold their produce to restaurants
in town. It was hard work. His father was out in their fields at first light,
and Gumercindo his brothers joined him each day after they had their breakfast.
They toiled all day, bent over their crops, pulling weeds, building frames for
the tomatoes, guiding the water down each row to water their crops, and picking
the bad fruit off of the plants.

When
it was time to harvest, they would fill the orders that his mother and the
three daughters had taken the day before. All the day’s orders had to be
picked, cleaned, packaged, and delivered before 10:00 AM so the restaurants
could be ready for their lunch rush.

After
Gumercindo’s father died, his mother sold the farm and moved them into the
city. With the funds from the sale of their farm, she acquired a booth where
the cruise ships docked. She sold “Made in Mexico” keepsakes to the tourists on
the cruise ships.

When
his mother died, Gumercindo took over the booth. His sisters married, and the
other brothers developed other interests, leaving Gumercindo alone to run the booth.

It was
during this time that he met Esperana. Her family also had a booth at the pier.
Between ships, they had time to visit with each other. Their meeting at the
pier quickly turned into a romance, and they were married shortly after that.

As
Gumercindo grew into a man, all his hard work in the fields transformed him
into a strong, rugged man who loved his family. He did not trust many people. Everything
he had, he had earned by the sweat of his brow.

Except
for his four years in the Mexican military, he had lived, worked and raised his
family in Mazatlán. Gumercindo was a big man by Mexican standards; he stood
over 2.3 Mexican
vara
tall (In American terms, that is 6 feet 4 inches
tall). He weighed in at 103 kilograms. His hands were weathered by working all
his life off of the land. They were large hands that could crush a man’s head
between them but were also able to hold a newborn lovingly.

It
took Gumercindo a long time to learn to control his temper. As a young man he
was quick to anger. He had been jailed a number of times for hurting another
man for disrespecting him or his. He only learned how to control his temper
after he married the love of his life, Esperana. She was the one who showed him
that a loving hand was better than an angry one. They had now had 22 years of
married happiness.

Esperana
was born and lived in Mazatlán all her life. Her parents had a small produce
farm that was across the valley from the farm that Gumercindo’s family lived
on. The two did not meet until the cruise ships started to visit Mazatlán. They
were among the first families that were given space to set up a booth. She worked
all day with her brothers in the fields to bring their produce to town to sell
to the restaurants. After she met Gumercindo, she spent so much of her time
watching him work in his family’s booth that she missed many sales.

She
was the only girl born to her parents. She had three brothers who hated to work
in the fields. Her brothers had found a way to get rich without working so
hard. They took the produce that they grew on their farm and trucked it to
cities outside of Mazatlán. They made a lot of money, but it was expensive to
keep their trucks on the road. One day, returning from Durango, 241 kilometers
from Mazatlán, they were driving down a steep road in the mountains when their
brakes failed. Their truck ran off the road, and all three brothers were killed.
This devastated Esparana’s parents. They sold their farm, moved into Mazatlán,
and put all of their efforts into their booth.

It was
not long after that before their grief took a toll on them. They both passed
away less than two years after their sons died. Esperana’s uncle came to town
to take over their booth, but he was not able to understand the complexities of
the tourist trade, and in less than six months, he lost the booth to his
creditors.

During
the time that her brothers had been delivering produce to other cities, Esperana’s
romance with Gumercindo had grown. They were married two months before her
uncle lost her family’s booth. Gumercindo’s parents were growing older. He was
the only one of the family that wanted to keep the booth running. His parents
made a wedding gift of the booth to Gumercindo and his new bride. With their
hard work they turned their booth into a way to make enough money to live all
year without having to have a side job.

As
everyone sat around the table eating breakfast, Gumercindo asked his wife, “Esperana,
did you hear the screams early this morning?”

“No,
my husband, I didn’t. What direction were they coming from? Did it sound like
they were nearby? Do you know why they were screaming?”

“No, I
don’t know why. It brought back memories of the war, the sounds of men dying on
a battlefield.

The
children sat listening to their parents. Esperana looked at them and realized
that they all looked a little frightened. She asked them, “Children, you look as
if you had bad dreams. What is troubling you so early in the day?”

“Mama,
I heard people screaming all night as well,” said Annalicia. “They would start,
and stop again. Every time, it sounded like they were in a different place. It
scared me! I couldn’t go back to sleep. Do you know what was happening?”

“The
sun is up, and I think they have stopped for now,” said Esperana. “Everything will
be fine. If you’re finished with your breakfast, please put your dishes in the
sink. All three of you need to wash up. Hurry, because you know that a ship
will be coming soon. Remember, we have to pick up the Castillos. Their truck is
still broken down.”

“Yes,
Mama,” said Annalicia. It had been hard on Rosamelia Castillo since her husband
Amadore had died last winter at the age of 31, far too young. Only two months
had passed from the time he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung
cancer until he was gone. Rosamelia believed that his condition had been caused
by the dirty jobs he did on board the ships. They had him doing the work that the
crew did not want to do themselves.

Rosamelia
always said, “The ship companies have always encouraged their captains to leave
the dirty work for us to do when they get here. They say ‘Mexicans will do
anything for a few dollars.’” Now Esperana remembered this and shook her head
sadly, thinking of Amadore. They had been picking Rosamelia up for four months
now since the Castillo’s old pickup had broken down.

 “All
right, everyone,” said Gumercindo, “Finish up and get ready to go. We need to load
up our supplies. The ship will be here soon.” He knew that if they were not
there on time, the crowd of tourists would have moved on down the pier past their
booth. And they still needed to pick up the Castillos. It was a good thing that
they just lived around the corner.

“Yes,” said Esperana, “We
always make it to the pier early enough to see the ship come in. Today I am a
little concerned about what you all heard early this morning.”

“Maurico,
my son,” said Gumercindo. “Have you all loaded everything we will need for
today?”

“Yes,
Father, everything is ready,” Mauricio answered, ticking off the items on his
fingers. “The sombreros, the belts, the wallets, the shirts and toys for the
children. They are all in the pickup.”

Now
Lucinda spoke up. “Father, why do we tell the tourists that everything we sell
is made in Mexico when it is not? The boxes that they come in say that they
were made in China.”

“The souvenirs
cost much less when they are made in China, but we sell them for the same
price. This means we make a bigger profit. That is why, when we get to the pier,
we must empty the boxes and hide them quickly, so the tourists will not see
them. All right, everyone, let’s go. Be sure to keep an eye out for anything
that doesn’t look right.”

With
that, the Ortegas left their home. They drove over to the Castillo’s house to
hook up the trailer. Rosamelia Castillo, now a 28-year old widow, was already
outside tying down the last of her supplies. The three Castillo daughters were
there as well: Rosalinda, 12; Reva, nine; and Rosari, eight.

The Ortegas
and the Castillos had booths side by side. Esperana was the “people person” of
her family. After they were given the booth as a wedding gift from Gumercindo’s
parents, it was not long until the two families had become close friends. Rosalinda
worked their booth for every ship that come in.

Rosalinda
grew up in the city. She met her husband as he helped his father go around to
the various businesses to repair broken equipment. They would come to her
parent’s shop to work on some of their old, worn-out equipment that was past
its prime.

Amadore
was a small man, only 1.93 Mexican vara (about 5 feet 4 inches) tall. This was
where Amadore learned how to work with his hands. Amadore’s father made him
crawl behind the machinery to work on it. With his small size, they didn’t have
to move the machines to work on them. After a summer of dating, Rosalinda
married Amadore; following their wedding, he used some of the money he had
saved while working for his father to buy a booth on the dock as a place where his
wife could work.

With his
skill of being able to quickly determine what was wrong with a piece of
equipment, Amadore was able to get a job working on a cruise ship that was in
port, working on a refrigeration unit. He repaired it in far less time than the
ship’s maintenance chief had expected. The ship’s maintenance chief paid him half
of what it would have cost in a larger port, yet Amadore considered what he had
received a huge sum. From then on, Amadore was requested regularly by many
cruise ships that had work to be done. No job was too small for him, or too large.

Amadore
was happy that he found a way to work with his hands. As a man, he could not
work with the tourists. “Too demanding,” he would say. “It is not a man’s job
to sell to the American sheep,” he would say. He found work as a dockside
worker, servicing the ships when they docked. The work was hard, dirty and
dangerous, but it paid very well, and in cash.

BOOK: The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins]
6.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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